Google Analytics Blog

• Two new Analytics webinars -- for advanced and beginning users2012-05-15T10:30:00.000-07:00
  Interested in learning how to use Analytics to make better decisions for your business? Here's your chance; join us next week for two webinars.  We're partnering with the Learn with Google team to present an introductory session on Getting started with Analytics, and a more advanced session covering one of the most requested topics - Digital Attribution & Conversion. Here's a little more detail on what we'll cover:
  
  Getting Started with Google Analytics
  Level of content: Beginner
  Covers the basics you need to get started with Analytics. Highlights the most helpful reports for ecommerce, bloggers/publishers, and lead generation businesses. Learn how to tag your campaigns and set up goals to measure if your marketing is a success.
  
  Presenter: Justin Cutroni, Analytics Advocate
  Date: Wednesday May 23rd, 2012
  Time: 12 pm PT / 3pm ET / 8pm GMT
  
  Building Blocks of Digital Attribution
  Level of content: Intermediate/Advanced
  Learn what marketing attribution is and what it can do for your business. This webinar will cover the basics of how attribution works, and we'll show you how to set up your Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts to enable important attribution tools--Search Funnels and Multi-Channel Funnels.
  
  Presenter: Bill Kee, Product Manager, Google Analytics
  Date: Thursday May 24th, 2012
  Time: 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm GMT
  
  These are free webinars, so be sure to register now and take a look here for more great webinars from other Google teams.
  
  Posted by Ian Myszenski, Google Analytics team

  

  

  
• Looking Ahead at Next Generation Measurement2012-05-14T13:36:00.000-07:00
  Marketers today have no shortage of data. In fact, there are more than 40 million online touch points measured every minute by Google Analytics. Technology advancements are helping marketers understand their customers more across channels and devices, and better analysis tools are finally making that massive amount of data accessible and actionable. This is fueling what we see as next generation measurement. Today I spoke at the Federated Media Conversational Marketing Summit about the most important trends that every CMO needs to know. Here's what I told them: 

  
  

  Next generation brand measurement
  
  

  In many ways, brand measurement thus far has been an article of faith - but it doesn't have to be. I think that soon you'll be able to optimize for brand like you do for performance today with concrete results, in real time. This will help brand marketers make smarter decisions while a campaign is still in flight, rather than serving as a static report card given after the fact. To do all of this, we need to bridge the online and offline gap with brand equivalency metrics that translate GRP and TRP into online reach and audience targeting.

  
  

  Recently we announced our Brand Activate Initiative as a first step, which gives metrics like Active GRP to assess online brand impact using reach and frequency, in the same way marketers are all already measuring GRP for TV. Active GRP is being built into the ad serving tools that our publishers and marketers already use, with the goal of making these metrics immediately actionable. This digital brand equivalency metric for GRP is the first in a series of exciting steps we're going to see to improve measurement for brand marketers. 

  
  

  Next generation attribution
  
  

  Over the last few years, we've made great leaps in the art of single channel measurement - identifying the right metrics in isolation for channels like TV, display, search and mobile. It's time now to bring the channels together and figure out how they impact each other. In other words, we have to move from silo to portfolio.

  
  

  At Google Analytics, we're finding that on average, customers interact with a brand 4.3 times over a two day period before they finally make a purchase. We're also seeing channels like mobile grow tremendously. For instance, mobile is now 8% of all conversions that we're seeing in Google Analytics, and mobile conversions have grown by about 180% in just the last year. So you can't afford not to know what paths customers are taking before they ultimately buy from you.
  
  

  
  

  But in a recent study, more than 40% of marketers said that their main struggle with attribution is choosing the right model to even get started. We hear these struggles every day, and provide tools like Multi-Channel Funnels and Attribution Modeling to help marketers get started. Though there isn't a one size fits all model, what we'll begin to see in the industry is empirically-derived attribution models customized by industry and marketing objectives, which marketers can use as a base for experimentation. 

  
  

  It's an exciting time in measurement, where data and marketing are finally getting married. I'm genuinely excited about what's in front of us, and I hope you are too!

  
  

  Posted by Amy Chang, Global Head of Product, Google Analytics

  

  

  
• How Nissan Uses Ecommerce Tracking Without Directly Selling Online2012-05-11T09:04:00.000-07:00
  
  

  This post originally appeared on the Google Analytics Japan blog.

  
  

  Google Analytics' e-commerce tracking allows online merchants to measure items sold and tie those results back to their digital marketing activities. But did you know that it can also be used to track non e-commerce activity?

  
  

  Nissan Motor Company does just this. Nissan operates in the automobile industry, and owns a network of websites designed to help consumers around the world decide which Nissan vehicle they would like to purchase.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Nissan uses e-commerce tracking whenever a visitor submits a request for a test drive or a brochure. They treat each request as if a car were sold, and record details such as the model, colour, transmission type, and location of the vehicles people inquire after. A traditional Google Analytics implementation for a non e-commerce site would simply use goals to measure conversions. So why did Nissan opt to use e-commerce tracking instead?

  
  

  They wanted to be able to measure more information about each inquiry within their Google Analytics reports. By implementing e-commerce tracking they are now able to pass additional information to their Google Analytics account, such as the category, colour, and model of car the visitor was interested in. Nissan's Global Marketing Strategy Division then analyses this information to understand which vehicles are in hot demand in each market; it then feeds those insights to their manufacturing plants across the globe to ensure that there is enough supply to satisfy demand. 

  
  

  One of the benefits of Google Analytics is that you can decide who should have access to your suite of reports. Nissan's Global Division uses this feature to decentralise access to their different market operations, allowing each country manager to log into Google Analytics and quickly assess the popularity of different models for their market. Nissan employed a Google Analytics Certified Partner in Japan, Ayudante, to help set up their account profiles and custom reports that could then be accessed by each of the country managers.

  
  

  Nissan's Global Marketing Strategy division says there are 3 key benefits they gain from Google Analytics as a whole:

  1. It is easy to assess product popularity globally and by market. The user experience is seamless and there was no complex setup necessary.
  2. Custom reports allow you to easily view complex information in one view. It dramatically reduces the time to summarize multiple reports, document it, and share it within the organisation.
  3. Google Analytics gives them access to timely information, which allows for better decision making.

  Even if you are a non e-commerce site, you should explore e-commerce tracking as a means of measuring more information about the products or services your visitors are inquiring about. Then share that information with your wider marketing and product teams so that they can make effective decisions to maximise sales.

  
  

  Posted by Noriyuki Ouchi, Google Analytics Solutions Consultant, Google Japan and Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Senior Conversion Specialist, Google Southeast Asia